Storyline 360: Restricting Which Mobile Device Orientations Learners Can Use
With the responsive mobile player in Storyline 360, we’ve optimized learners’ experience on tablets and smartphones by moving the player out of the way and maximizing screen real estate for your slide content. Even better, you can now control how learners hold their mobile devices as they view your courses. Just set responsive playback restrictions. For example, let’s say you build a course that's meant to be viewed in landscape mode on tablets and smartphones, and you don’t want learners to have a subpar experience by holding their mobile devices in portrait mode. No problem. Just limit playback to landscape mode before you publish. Click the gear icon at the end of the responsive preview toolbar in the upper right corner of the Storyline app. Use the Tablets drop-down menu to choose which orientation(s) learners can use when they view your course on tablets. Use the Phones drop-down menu to choose which orientation(s) learners can use when they view your course on smartphones. Click OK, then publish your course. Tip: Playback Restrictions Don't Apply to Rise 360 and Review 360 Responsive playback restrictions won't work when you publish to Review 360. Storyline blocks always rotate with the Rise 360 courses where they're embedded, giving learners an intuitive experience on mobile devices. And Storyline courses always rotate with the Review 360 interface so stakeholders have a consistent experience when leaving feedback.Everything You Need to Know About Creating Mobile Learning with Articulate 360
Articulate 360 has everything an e-learning professional needs to quickly and easily develop courses for desktop computers, tablets, and smartphones. It includes industry-leading mobile technology that frees course developers from endlessly tweaking their courses for every device a learner might use. Let’s take a closer look at Articulate 360's technology—and how it makes developing mobile learning so much easier. Publish Storyline 360 and Studio 360 Courses to a Responsive Player Articulate 360 includes our award-winning authoring apps Storyline 360 and Studio 360. Create any interactive e-learning imaginable with Storyline 360. And Studio 360 makes it easy to transform PowerPoint presentations into engaging e-learning. Both of these apps use our responsive mobile course player, which adapts course content for any device. Here’s how it works: When a learner opens a Storyline 360 or Studio 360 course on their mobile device, the responsive player automatically adapts to make the most of the screen real estate while preserving course content. There’s no need for e-learning developers to tweak courses for different devices or aspect ratios. They simply publish content and the technology does the rest. See the player in action in this video. To provide a seamless experience for learners on the go, our responsive mobile player automatically provides intuitive mobile navigation and supports mobile gestures such as swipe and pinch-to-zoom. Explore this example on your mobile device to see what we mean! Create Truly Responsive E-Learning with Rise 360 In addition to the responsive player in Storyline 360 and Studio 360, Articulate 360 includes Rise 360—a web-based app that was built with mobile in mind. Rise 360 lets course creators build inherently responsive e-learning right in their web browser. They can kickstart course creation by customizing a pre-built course template or create a completely custom course by adding lessons and blocks. Because it’s Rise, all course content adapts beautifully to any device. Take a look at this example on your mobile device to see what we mean. You’ll notice how course content reflows and looks great no matter the device size or orientation (try looking at the example in both portrait and landscape modes). Rise is responsive e-learning the way it should be—totally effortless! More Resources for Learning About Mobile E-Learning E-Learning Heroes is chock-full of resources that’ll help you create m-learning easily. The Definitive Guide to Multi-Device E-Learning: This comprehensive e-book will walk you through everything you need to know to create multi-device e-learning. Why Rise 360 Is a Kick-Butt Multi-Device Authoring Tool: Learn more about creating responsive e-learning with Rise 360. Comparing the Storyline 360 Responsive Player with Adobe Captivate’s Responsive Solution: See how the responsive player in Storyline 360 differs from Captivate’s responsive approach. 4 Tips for Making Your E-Learning Course Content Mobile-Friendly: Learn more about optimizing your e-learning for learners using mobile devices. Take Articulate 360 for a Spin Interested in learning more about Articulate 360? Get a free, 30-day trial to try your hand at creating multi-device learning today.3 Steps for Getting Started with Multi-Device E-Learning
Making desktop computer–only e-learning is a thing of the past. Today’s learners are device-agnostic. They use whichever device they have on hand at that moment, whether it’s a laptop, a tablet, or a smartphone. If you want to get your training into the hands of the people who need it, when they need it, you have to make sure it works on any and every device. If you’re reading this article, you’re probably already as convinced of this as I am. But just because you’re on board with the idea of multi-device e-learning doesn’t mean you know how to make it a reality in your organization. Follow these three steps to get started and ensure a smooth transition into multi-device e-learning creation. 1. Ask the Right Questions It’s tempting to forego any planning and dive right into building multi-device courses, but before you take the plunge it’s important to understand the impact of these changes in order to ensure you’ll be successful. Here are two fundamental questions to consider: Are your learners ready for multi-device e-learning? Use this helpful checklist to find out. Is your organization prepared for multi-device e-learning? Fill out this table to get your answer. Shifting your organization to multi-device e-learning doesn’t have to be a huge undertaking, but it’s crucial to think about these things ahead of time if you want to ensure a smooth transition. 2. Determine Your Approach The two most widely used approaches in multi-device e-learning are web-based and slide-based learning. But how do you know which approach to adopt? Great question! The good news is, you don’t have to use the same approach for every project. Rather, you can switch between the two depending on your content and the learner’s needs. Let’s take a closer look at these two approaches and how to decide which is best suited for your project. Slide-Based E-Learning Slide-based e-learning has been the standard for a long time and is still commonly used today. You can create slide-based courses using apps like Storyline 360, which allow course designers to design content by placing text, images, videos, and other multimedia objects in specific spots on a slide. Often, the relative positioning of objects is important in slide-based learning. For example, in the customer service course shown below it wouldn’t make sense for one of the characters to suddenly appear above the other instead of side by side: Explore and download course template For this reason, slide-based courses can be scaled up or down depending on screen size, but the objects on the slide should stay in the same position. Here are a couple of examples of projects where it makes sense to favor a slide-based approach: Courses where the relative positioning of objects on the screen is important, like in the above example. Projects requiring a high level of design customization. One of the downsides of web-based e-learning is that because the content reflows automatically, you have less control over what your content looks like on each device. So if, for example, your client wants the logo to always appear in a specific position, a slide-based approach might be a better fit. Web-Based E-Learning Web-based e-learning is a more modern form of online training that’s become popular in recent years. Web-based courses look and behave like mini-websites instead of a series of slides where learners click Next to advance. In addition to being more intuitive, web-based e-learning is often fully responsive, meaning the content dynamically adapts and reflows depending on the screen size. Some authoring apps, like Rise 360, allow you create inherently responsive courses without any programming skills. Why is responsive design unique to web-based courses? Because unlike with slide-based e-learning, the relative positioning of text and objects in web-based courses doesn’t matter. This makes it easy to reflow the content based on screen size and orientation without distorting the message. If that all seems a little abstract to you, check out this example of a web-based e-learning course made in Rise 360 to get a better idea of what a responsive learning experience is like: Explore and copy example Here are some types of projects where a web-based approach would be appropriate: Simple, straightforward courses where relative positioning of objects is irrelevant. For example, if you have a text and an associated image but the message remains the same whether the image is above, below, or beside the text. Video-based courses. Since the content is embedded within the video, when the course is reflowed there won’t be any issues. How-to courses. The goal of this kind of course is to help learners understand how to do something. Process, timeline, tabs, and accordion interactions are the perfect way to motivate learners to lean forward and pull the content they need. These kinds of interactions are easy to reflow for different screen sizes without changing the meaning. Quizzes. Quiz questions follow a standard format (a question with some possible choices), so making them responsive is a cinch! 3. Choose the Right App There are tons of e-learning apps out there touting their ability to help you create great multi-device and mobile courses. If you’ve never built e-learning for multiple devices before, it can be challenging to decide which one best suits your needs. Here are some key things to consider when you’re weighing your options: Does the app allow you to create courses that look beautiful and work perfectly on any and all devices or do you have to use “supported” devices? Limiting learners to specific devices is nearly impossible, so it’s important to choose an authoring software that allows you to build courses that work on any device. Does the app automatically adjust your course so it works on all screen sizes or do you have to tweak your content manually? Your time is precious. You don’t want to spend hours making sure your content looks flawless on every possible device your learners might use. Go with an app that does the heavy lifting for you, like Rise 360 or Storyline 360. With Rise 360 you can create inherently responsive courses automatically and then just pop in your content. And with Storyline 360 you can create slide-based courses and the course player automatically resizes depending on the screen size. Does the app optimize screen space by hiding or minimizing non-essential elements (like browser and navigation buttons) on smaller devices? Resizing your course is only half the battle. Have you ever noticed how the navigation on mobile sites is different than their desktop counterparts? It only makes sense that your e-learning course’s navigation be optimized as well, so your content is always front and center. Make sure this is a feature your authoring app offers. Here’s a comparison worksheet to help you evaluate the different apps you’ve heard about. And here’s another article with tips on other, more general things to consider when choosing your authoring software: Top Considerations for Choosing the Right E-Learning Authoring App. Go Forth and Create Multi-Device E-Learning Making the shift to multi-device e-learning might seem intimidating, but armed with these tips you’ve got everything you need to make the transition a success. Just relax, take it one step at a time, and you’ll be a multi-device e-learning pro before you know it! Here are some related resources that will help you hone your multi-device e-learning skills even further: Why Rise 360 Is a Kick-Butt Multi-Device Authoring Tool 4 Tips for Making Your E-Learning Course Content Mobile-Friendly What Is Responsive E-Learning and Why Does It Matter? Comparing the Storyline 360 Responsive Player with Adobe Captivate’s Responsive Solution If you have any questions or comments, please share them below. And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning.Storyline 3: Restricting Which Mobile Device Orientations Learners Can Use
With the all-new responsive player in Storyline 3, we’ve optimized learners’ experience on tablets and smartphones by moving the player out of the way and maximizing screen real estate for your slide content. Even better, you can now control how learners hold their mobile devices as they view your courses. Just set responsive playback restrictions. For example, let’s say you build a course that's meant to be viewed in landscape mode on tablets and smartphones, and you don’t want learners to have a subpar experience by holding their mobile devices in portrait mode. No problem. Just limit playback to landscape mode before you publish. Click the gear icon at the end of the responsive preview toolbar in the upper right corner of the Storyline app. Use the Tablets drop-down menu to choose which orientation(s) learners can use when they view your course on tablets. Use the Phones drop-down menu to choose which orientation(s) learners can use when they view your course on smartphones. Click OK, then publish your course.Tip of the Iceberg
Happy New Year! When I take part in a Challenge, I'm often asked, "How long did it take you to build that demo, Jon?" The answer can vary, depending on whether I'm experimenting with a new feature, revisiting an earlier concept, or building something completely new. What you see is just "the tip of the iceberg". The next question is: "Is the juice worth the squeeze?" Maybe. Maybe not. Depends on the project, your audience, and the subject matter. Remember, interaction doesn't always aid knowledge transfer. But by regularly practicing with your tools, you can bring your development time down, and make interactions like this one more viable on a real project. Click below to test the demo for yourself, and let me know what you think. https://bit.ly/elhc536
Spookily Accruate
Hello! For this challenge, I reused a character I created way back in 2020, for Challenge #292 (Using Variables). In case you wondered, Zardoz is a cross between Sean Connery and the Zoltan machine from Big. I've upgraded Zardoz with a few tricks I've learned in the meantime, including live polling, a speech animation cycle, and some sneaky Javascript. If Zardoz doesn't successfully read your mind, he can still surprise you with what he does know about you. Does Zardoz know what you're thinking? TRY IT OUT HERE
Snapshot graphics + click-and-reveal = engaging cybersecurity learning
For this week’s challenge, we used snapshot graphics and a click-and-reveal interaction to help learners quickly recognize common cyber attacks—without overwhelming them. View the activity using the link below. https://www.swiftelearningservices.com/custom-elearning-snapshot-graphics-click-reveal-cyber-security-attacks/Can We Be Friends?
Hello! Everyone hates icebreakers, right? With that in mind, I've created this mobile-optimized Storyline interaction to help you make new friends. Are we cool? There are 30 different feedback options, which are selected at random by Javascript. If you have any other questions, please ask. We're all friends here!
